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 Artist Statement

Within my work, I seek to produce an allusive world in which the figures, objects, and spaces that encompass them seem to hint to more than what is depicted. My objective in doing so is to encourage the creative mind to explore the possibility of multiple meanings. There are times when I look at my own work and wonder what it all means, what the story is, and where the ideas stem from. Like many artists, I acknowledge the possibility of universal mythic images as established by the Jungian philosophy of archetypes. "A work of art has its origin in an unconscious impulse that springs from a collective of universal values common to all men from which the artist derives the archai of organic existence." Rather than focusing on the source of my imagery, I am interested in encouraging associations from the viewer based on their own experiences and insight. I do not desire to create a fixed meaning but instead hope to present an image that incites interpretive possibilities.

The possibility for interpretation arises from the use of the female figure and symbolic imagery. Seemingly everyday subject matter, such as the female figure and recognizable objects, bridge the gap between the fantastic and the real. With cropping, gesture, and a simplified and flat depiction I create an ambiguous world that borders the edge of abstraction. The world that I create is subdued emotionally and this is heightened in the fact that I do not paint from models or posed objects. Color, space and the figure are invented in my work. The result is an exaggerated distortion of the figure that is psychologically charged through color and imagery and yet detached and aloof in the attitude of the figure and the flatness of the painting.

These types of inventions are evident in my painting, "Woman with Lemon." In this work, a female figure takes up the most space compositionally. She is positioned off-centered to the right, and cropped at the waist. The right arm is cropped at the edge of the picture plane, and the left arm is extended, holding a vibrant yellow lemon that stands out from the flat green background. The figure looks off in the direction of the lemon with an expressionless gaze. In this painting, I have reduced the elements of composition to the bare essentials. The space is flattened in the green background and there is minimal modeling of the figure resulting in a symbolically charged lemon through both color and the gesture of the figure. The reason for doing so is not to impose a strict narrative based upon my supposed meanings, but to allow the viewers to decide for themselves what the significance of the imagery is.

There is an element of mystery that I seek to create in my work that I also find in the work of Jared French (1905- ). Best known for his series of statuesque figure paintings of the 1940's, he creates a mythic realm of obscured meaning by merging the human figure with forms of nature, architecture and symbolic imagery. He has been categorized as a magic realist as his works are both magical and realistic. Keeping in tune with magic realism, his paintings imbue everyday reality with a supernatural or ritualistic aura. Allegorical references within his work, such as the numinous figures, suggest a hidden text. However, they are not simple allegories in which each pictorial element stands for an abstract idea, but rather they are images that evoke numerous ideas.

French's painting, "Shelter" (1944), serves as an example of the mythic aura created through stylistic and symbolic references. In this painting, a clothed woman with stiffened arms and the staring eyes of an ancient Greek kore sits centered in the picture upon a wooden crate, while a standing man, in a similar statue-like pose, secures a rope on a tent-like structure above the woman. The background is a muted shade of violet that abruptly meets a foreground of a lighter color. The only other object within the painting is a crab in the front left foreground with only partial limbs attached. The placement of the lifeless crab suggests that the foreground could be sand, yet there are no other clues to the space or setting. The figures in their statuesque poses refer to ancient worlds and suggest a hidden narrative and yet any attempts to decode these references only leads to an opaqueness not to be broken through.

Similarly, the work of Alan Feltus hints at possible narratives to be found. Of primary importance to me is the fact that Feltus does not paint from the model.

The painter who works from life is supplied with abundant visual material. But in working from the imagination, where there's nothing physical from which to select and interpret, the painting can easily lack a certain important quality of specificity. My goal isn't always to answer questions; rather, my work often raises themmeaning isn't always clear. In this way, the piece is rather like reality.

The work of French and Feltus functions correspondingly in the lack of specificity of meaning. However, communication with the viewer is still important, especially in the work of Feltus. Communication is done through silence in the use of gesture, glances, and symbolically charged objects that function to enrich rather than to explain. In his painting, "Last Dance" (1998), Feltus depicts two figures in a manner that suggests a narrative taking place. A male figure holds a rose in one hand behind his back, while the other hand gestures towards himself. He meets the gaze of the female figure who likewise is gesturing towards herself. There is no clear explanation of the encounter between the two figures and meaning is left up to the viewer to interpret. As Feltus points out:

I don't have a narrative in mind but hint at the possibility of a story. I see life that way. When we take the time to slow down and observe the world, the moment and what is around us, the people and their doings, light, color, space, etc... we are not witnessing something prepared as in theater.

The ambiguity and pictorial world of stillness found in Feltus' painting is significant to me because I find mystery to be more interesting than explanation. This element of mystery is heightened through simplified forms and figures with stylized and elongated limbs that evoke influences of mannerist figure paintings. I have also turned to Mannerism and early Italian painters such as Giotto, Pontormo, Piero della Francesca, and Massaccio for inspiration because of the simplified, generalized or slightly distorted forms, the use of gesture, and the use of symbolic imagery to illustrate or suggest narrative. Because this style of paintings seems highly choreographed, I also find it to be slightly surreal and non-realistic. I aim to reproduce this aspect of generalization within my own work. In my paintings, I place less importance on the meaning of the figure and focus instead on visual matters. Cropping of the figure is important in the work because in my mind it shows that I am not interested in strictly figurative painting. This fact is also evident in that I avoid conventions of traditional portraiture and painterly surfaces. Since I do not use models or paint from objects, I feel free to take liberties that further illustrate this issue, such as unnatural flesh tones, and a flatness of the figure and objects.

In my series of paintings that deal strictly with sections of the body such as hands holding objects, or objects alone, it is particularly evident that I am not focused on accurate representations. "Hand Holding Orange" is a painting in which one hand emerges from outside the picture plane, holding an orange. The background is divided into two different shades of a deep red. The two colors break the space up to suggest a possible horizon and add a minimal appearance of space. The lack of a specific setting, as in all my paintings, functions to flatten out the space as well as to make it an unclear space. The hand is painted in a highly generalized manner; all parts are painted equally and no element is given too much attention to detail or modeling. The painting is symbolically charged because it is focused on the bright orange that the hand presents. Normally, images add up to more than what I consciously planned at the time of painting. To me, it is just a hand holding an orange yet the method in which I present this image, in a psychologically charged depiction may lead the viewer to see these images as holding an internal meaning. It is not my intention to be equivocal, but rather to allow the viewer to see the objects for themselves.

I do not aim to create art that is a direct expression of personal experience or emotion. In her essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Linda Nochlin states that a problem lies in the misconception of what art is: "the naïve idea that art is the direct personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms. Art is almost never that, great art never is." While initially I responded to this statement with an element of relief, as I had previously struggled to develop a subject matter that was personally meaningful, I now find this to be a problematic idea. Many well-known artists make art about their personal experiences or about personal expression. To say that great art cannot be a form of personal expression is to rule out a majority of fine painters especially within the twentieth century. She proceeds in this essay to explain how art making involves a "self consistent language of form, more or less dependent upon, or free from, given temporarily defined conventions, schemata, or systems of notation, which have to be learned or worked out." While the world that I create in my paintings is not a story of personal experience, I find it nearly impossible to avoid some form of personal expression in my work whether in form or content. I paint females because I relate to female forms, being one myself. It has taken me up until now to determine what it is that I want to paint and develop personal "systems of notation." Figuring out why, what the motivations are behind the paintings, and what the meaning is, could take me a lifetime to work out, as I further develop my own systems of creating compositions on canvas. Perhaps I will find personal expression and experience to be of greater importance in my future works, whether they are further abstracted and transformed from what I view in everyday life, or more closely representative of figures and objects in nature.

Notes from Text

1. Manzioni, Piero. "For the Discovery of a Zone of Images." Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. Berkely:University of California, 1996.

2. Grimes, Nancy. Jared French's Myths. New York:Chameleon Books, 1993, p VI.

3. Ibid., p. VI-VII

4. Feltus ,Alan. "Inside the Painters Mind."p.38-43. The Artist's Magazine. January, 1992, p. 39.

5. Ibid., p 38.

6. Feltus, Alan. Quote from personal correspondence, March 28, 2001.

7. Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art, Power and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row. p.

8. Ibid., p 149.